Smartphone casinos
Smartphone Casinos

What do you do most often with your smartphone? If you’re the average U.S. citizen, the odds say you’ve played a game application on your telecommunications toy in the past month, and one in four of these play at mobile casinos – despite the fact that gambling online in America is basically in a state of prohibition.

These were among the key findings in a Pew Research Center study of over 1,900 smartphone users in the U.S. released this week. Other significant statistics show that:

• 82% of American citizens are cell phone users;

• 23% of adults live in a household without a landline phone;

• 35% of adults have cell phones with apps, but only 68% of those who have apps actually use them;

• 29% of adult cell phone users have downloaded an app to a phone;

• 60% of those surveyed played games on a cell phone in the past month, beating out activities like using news services (52%), maps/GPS software (51%), social networking (47%), and music (43%) apps;

• among game users, 25% said they had played mobile casino games in the past month, second-most popular to “puzzle games” at 36% while arcade-style games placed third at 22% within the demographic;

• 42% of those with apps use them several times daily; and

• 76% of people using apps spend 30 minutes or less with them at a time.

In general, Pew Research sees the results of its survey as evidence of the “Rise of the Apps Culture.” As more and more Americans learn to use smartphones to their fullest extent, more will be playing for fun – and ever more at a casino online.